


Golden Hour

by PassingInTheNight



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, Last Episode I watched was 4x07, My final reflection on the characters I lost after the last episode I watched, They're happy in the worlds we create and I only see them there now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-07
Updated: 2017-03-07
Packaged: 2018-09-30 04:24:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10153595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PassingInTheNight/pseuds/PassingInTheNight
Summary: It's 37 steps to the alter. Oh how long those 37 steps can be.Oliver sees it all flash before his eyes, but it's not death that follows... it's life.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I started this story probably over a year ago and this is me just wanting to finally be done with it. I know I'm being dramatic, but the storyline introduced to drive Oliver and Felicity apart during the crossover episodes in the beginning of season 4 is something that immediately ends my interest in a couple. I loved these fools and I spent a lot of time enjoying the stories you guys wrote on here about them. So this is my last hoorah for these goddamn fictional characters.

It's a quiet day. They had been thinking about holding the wedding outside at some fancy garden, but she had gone off on a five minute "informational speech" (rant) about how people who do that are too trusting of the weather. So in all their weather distrust they had chosen the church Oliver had gone to as a kid. He remembers helping her plan a lot of it, but to see it all put together... well this is probably the one and only time he's excited to be in this church. 

He knows he should be paying attention more, soaking in the day, but it all comes down to one person and she hasn't walked in yet. 

Their friends and family don't take up much room. That used to make Oliver a lot sadder than it does now. Yet, it feels wrong to allow a hollow feeling to settle in his chest thinking of all the people that didn't make it to this moment. Because today he's getting married and he would rather leave than have her look into eyes that were remembering all the bad when all the good was standing in front of him.

That morning had been like the others, all those times he'd gotten to wake up next to her, all the times she kissed his cheek and got up to go take a shower. There was no last minute rush to get everything ready because they had taken care of it all. He felt peaceful, and for once, in a long time, he was just a guy living his life.

The song they had chosen begins to play from a piano somewhere on his left. It's not the usual wedding song because she had said it was actually from an opera where everyone dies, or something like that. The people all stand up, turn and look to the back. He lifts his head and it all kind of stops. 

They'd both decided they weren't all that interested in an intensely dramatic wedding. There wouldn't be doves or 10 minute vows because they don't need it, this was 4 years in the making and they would have been fine with a judge and a courthouse.

But they wanted it. 

She's the one woman that he never doubted. Sure, he had doubted aspects of their life, but he never doubted that she was and always would be the person he wanted to be with, his best friend, the one that believed in him.

So when she steps through the double doors it all stops.

It's 37 steps from those doors to the alter. She had counted during their rehearsal. At the time, Oliver had laughed because she had made it sound like such a tremendous distance. It certainly seemed like it now. 

She's wearing a really nice white dress, her hair put up in some special way. She looks beautiful... but that's never really changed.

She begins walking.

On her first step his heart gives a little jolt and a memory passes through his mind. It's one where anger and sadness are so present, but there's this woman and she doesn't expect him to play the role, she just lets him be. She makes him smile without even trying and he walks away hoping he'll get to talk to her again.

On her second step Oliver remembers all the times he did come back to her, because maybe even then he felt that's where he belonged. It was still a dark time then, no one person could change that other than himself, but she made it seem not so impossible.

A third step closer and he thinks of her time behind a computer, the voice in his ear that gave him something to hold on to as he took yet another life.

There's the dull ache of the people that have died, of the people he'll never get back, but her presence, her light, it's in the forefront reminding Oliver to breathe.

Four and he remembers her by his side in whatever he tried to do. Those months of trying to run a corporation, the days when her giving him a knowing smile was what got him through board meetings. Those are just as important as the times she stitched him up. She supported him, sacrificing so much, and he loved her for it.

The fifth and his mind flashes to the moment he told her he loved her, he hadn't really meant it at the time but when she'd given him an out on the island, it felt wrong to say anything to contradict it.

A sixth step, and it's those weeks and months when everything seemed to fit. It was like a school crush, but he never wanted it to end. She would touch his arm in passing and he'd have to fight to get the smile off his face. Because when someone is that big in your life, even the small things they do seem extraordinary. He'd never admit it to anyone, but when he finally worked up the courage to ask her to dinner his palms had been sweaty, heart beating, and the lines he'd practiced for half an hour had gone out the window.

Seven steps in: fear and sadness poke and prod at his calm as there's an explosion that everyone else seems to have stopped hearing a long time ago. Oliver hasn't, though. He couldn't afford to forget. Forgetting meant he decided she wasn't at least somewhat in danger because of him. Forgetting meant that any date they have could end the way he thought their first date had. He remembers to keep her safe, but let go of anything beyond that because she'll see it in his eyes otherwise.

Nine. His grandma had once told him that his girl was waiting for him, so he had to wait for her. His grandma was kind of out of it at that point and he had thought it was just her spouting the ramblings of the elderly. But it stuck with him. First he broke it off and then she did. It hadn't mattered though. She would always be his girl, so he waited. It seemed like a really long wait though. 

Ten steps and it starts. The light gets stronger and becomes a given not an infrequent happiness. Life takes a different tone when you know the sun will rise in the morning. And that's what she did, she gave him peace that couldn't be beaten out of somebody. The montage in his head reaches this day, the day he gets to tell anybody willing to listen that his girl had chosen him.

But it keeps going.

Her first ten steps were everything they'd been through, months upon years of life flashing through his mind. But it was 37 steps to the alter... she'd counted.

Their life to come seems to roll through real calm. Like those old home videos. They're grainy and kind of blurry, but you can still see everyone is smiling. The calm before a storm only matters because you know of the destruction that can come next. This calm... well it was the quiet before the noise that complete happiness brings. The one where kids are laughing, the dog is barking, and you aren't looking for the light at the end of the tunnel because the light already surrounds you where you stand.

She's his girl. Always will be. Even if this day never happens, she gave him a chance at happiness. And the reason we stay alive is on the off chance we might see that light again. 

"I love you, Felicity, my dear. Whether or not our life becomes fiction or truth, I want you to know that you are my golden hour. The place where the breeze blows quietly and everything looks beautiful in the last moments of the day."


End file.
